While The Soldiers of Year II is not overtly militant or nationalist, in poem after poem the enforced forms of peace seem only an inversion of those of the prior war. In these poems persists a suggestion that has come through in each of McGuckian s recent volumes: while the body may become a shared prison, nevertheless through its agency, through its ability, literally to act, the suffering and even the dead may find, if not release, then at least a common language."